Every day an incredible number of credit card payments are made around the world, and the number of payments are steadily increasing.
EMV is the leading payment system specification for credit cards on the market and was jointly developed by the companies Europay International, Mastercard International, and Visa International, hence the abbreviation EMV. To be able to develop a credit card payment system that is capable of using standard EMV-approved credit cards, it is essential that the payment system fulfills the EMV specification.
The majority of credit card payments are still made in stores using bulky and stationary EMV-approved point-of-sale (POS) terminals. However, in the last couple of years the interest, both from the public and from companies, of being able to make payments with portable hand-held devices such as mobile phones have grown rapidly. However, the mobile phone alone is not considered to be a secure device and does not fulfill the requirements for conducting a secure EMV-approved payment.
It has been shown that a credit card payment can be made secure and EMV-approved using a specialized card reader device that can be attached to an unsecure mobile phone in the manner presented in the International patent application with the application number PCT/EP2010/066186 by the iZettle company. However, the method presented in PCT/EP2010/066186 relies on that the cardholder has a payment card with an integrated EMV-approved chip which can be read by the card reader device, which today is not always the case. There are instances when the payment card can't be read in a card reader, for instance when the payment card only has a magnetic strip, if the chip has been damaged or if a card reader device is missing.
Thus, finding a way to be able to make secure and EMV-approved electronic credit card payments using an ordinary unsecure mobile phone without any secure card reader device also without using a payment card with a microchip is therefore highly sought after.